September 27, 2017

It’s been a long time since my last article but I’m back from the dead to talk about Knight’s & Magic. In my midseason article, I praised its consistency and pacing of the storytelling. This fact stays true to the end but my overall opinion of the series remains the same. This article is going to be structured differently from my previous reviews.Let’s start with what I expected to happen in the latter half of this series. There was a looming premonition of war that just ever so slighted teased its way into the story. I expressed my worries of Ernie’s progression of SKs to be too overpowered for any possible war. What really caught me by surprise is the “evil rival” on the other side of the war. Someone with the mind to engineer new technology just as Ernie did. Oratio Kojass created such different equipment compared to Ernie who solely focused on creating his own SK. Oratio made carrier ships to deploy SKs and eventually developed a mecha drake to fight off Ernie. The interesting thing is that even though these two were on opposite sides of the battlefield, they quickly admired and criticized each others designs. They had that same tightened bolt in their head for mechs. In the end, my prediction was halted by Oratio and his inventions, therefore the war itself became a grand finale.One thing I want to mention is that, there wasn’t a spearhead for the “villains” of this story. It was only perceived to be the Zaloudek Kingdom. There wasn’t an introduction into a figurehead to have an idea of why this war takes place. Oratio, in my opinion, would be considered as the Starscream of this adventure. Although he isn’t necessarily Megatron, he still poses a threat because of his overall knowledge and ability to assess the situation. Our perceived “Megatrons” were almost always killed in battle and didn’t have any kind of backstory. This was one aspect of the series that I would’ve liked to see. At the end of the final episode we are presented with a Starscream like situation. Oratio has a flying Dr. Robotnik type of device and escapes from battle to happily scheme elsewhere.Now I want to bring up everything that is not the war. First, the Ether Reactors and how they’re made. There is a different race that is creating these reactors for the humans because for whatever reason, humans can’t use magic to create/manipulate it like they can. I can’t say I didn’t expect this but I wasn’t actively creating theories about it. Next up is what seemed like fillers to me, things or characters that didn’t serve too much of a purpose. One character in particular, Prince Emrys who is the grandson of our King, only exists to shout his catchphrase/signature ability. Other than that, he’s rarely in dialogue and kind of a big brother figure.Something that I thought would never happen is the idea of a proper romance. We all know Ernie loves his mechs and all things about them but what about the ladies? He doesn’t want anything to do with them obviously but the other characters are sort of free reign. Introducing, Princess Eleonora of Kuschpercha, her father died fighting the Zaloudek forces in order for his family to escape. They all end up getting captured anyway to force marriage and become rightful rulers of the land but what’s important is who comes to rescue them. Why of course, it’s the Order of The Silver Phoenix. And it’s not Ernie who sweeps Eleonora off her depressing saddle but the boy himself, Archid “Kid” Olter. Kid runs out of ways to persuade the princess into being rescued so into he vows himself to become her loyal knight. What a fucking romantic right? Well they don’t end up together at the end, so romance fails even though Eleonora was smitten by Kid. The interesting thing is that they find a way to make jokes about their possible romance and it’s really refreshing. Seeing Ernie swoon over mechs becomes stale after so long.Finally, I want to talk action, fight scenes and adrenaline. As you might expect from warring mechs in a fantasy land, there has to be some baller fight scenes. I know I expected way too much from the action. I’ve seen my share of Gundam series and various warring battles. To be honest, my expectations shouldn’t be that high but I like to see complicated tactics mixed in with the fighter’s soul and a splash of extremity. That’s why I enjoyed most of the side battles more than Ernie’s fights. Because Ernie makes it look too easy sometimes and he doesn’t have a fighting soul. His soul is geared toward the mechanical sort of things. He has the tactician part down but I just can’t feel his presence in the fight. Which is really contradictory when the Zaloudek refer to his SK as the “Demon”. Another factor that might contribute to this is that, I never felt like his life was in danger. And this ties into what I mentioned earlier about Ernie being too overpowered. There were two real instances when his life was in danger, one was when he tested his SK’s flying mechanic for the first time and almost blew himself up. The second was when Oratio’s drake first appeared, stopped his ability to fly, and tried to blow him up. We just ended up with a real DBZ moment, firing giant Kamehamehas at each other to cancel it out.To wrap up this review, I rated it a 7/10 on MAL but it’s probably closer to 6.5/10. Our protagonist doesn’t face too much adversity and he just gets handed whatever he wants. The action scenes were above average even though there was no main villain to focus on. I think if this series were to continue there’s a great possibility for a better villain or Oratio to make a comeback. The problem would lie in what kind of story arc would they provide. Most of the issues I have with Knight’s & Magic is just that it doesn’t meet my standards. I can see that it’s good for what it is but I’m not recommending it. You’re not missing much with this one unless you’re a mecha otaku as well.